My Gaming Philosophy

I’ve been playing Stormblood, the new FFXIV expansion (and before anyone asks, no, I will not be making a guide for it; sorry), and there has been a lot of consternation among the player base based on combat and job action changes. I main a White Mage, the job most commonly referred to as broken or useless based on the early released changes, but so far my experience (through level 66) has been nothing but positive. Indeed, the more I read, the less I understand where these complaints are coming from. It’s important to note that I’m not a raider: I have no interest in playing on a schedule, nor am I the sort of competitive that would make me care about things like world firsts or even completing the most difficult challenges. I just want to see all the content, so I’m content (for example) to have completed Alexander (normal) in Heavensward and never set foot in Alexander (savage).

The more I read about these complaints, the more I think they have a much more fundamental basis than I originally assumed. I don’t think the core problem here is people’s jobs being nerfed (or not made good enough to keep up), particularly since there is no Stormblood raid to actually test jobs against yet anyway. I think the problem is that Square Enix’s intent with the combat system redesign was to pull players back towards playing the game they way the creators intended. (Most obviously in making massive pulls harder to pull off.)

That brings my to my gaming philosophy, which has a heavy influence on the guides I’ve made. I’m not looking to find the best exploit, or determine the absolute best path towards a goal. Rather, I like to gather all the information I can on a game and use it to answer a different question: how did the creators mean for this game to be played? That’s also how I tend to play games, especially single-player games. But I’m starting to realize it even affects how I play FFXIV. I seem to be much less inconvenienced by these changes than the most vocal complainers simply because I already played the game the way Square Enix seems to want people to now.

None of this is to say that my way is any better than another, of course. But it is to say that my guides are generally not focused on exploits. They won’t be much use to the guys doing AGDQ, for instance. But I’d like to think they’ll be useful to anyone trying to understand the design of these games at a fundamental level.